The Funeral Fleet
by Estoma
Summary: While District 2 build their dead cairns of stone, the sailors of District 4 know it is cruel to trap a soul beneath hard and unforgiving rock.


**Author's note: If you think this looks familiar, you'd be right. Formally found in 'Outside the Box' now this is a revamped version. **

Gulls cried overhead and swooped gracefully above the funeral fleet. There were fishing trawlers aplenty, but no nets were cast today. Larger boats kept to the outside, in the open water, like an albatross that must seek open sky to stretch its wings. Smallest, skiffs darted like swallows in any space they could find. But none overtook the leading boat; not even the proud sloops whose sails bellied out like the full moon.

The leader was a wooden trawler in a questionable state of repair. Fitful sunlight, struggling through the cloud cover, caught off its cheery paint; red and crispy lacquered blue. Only the hasty brush strokes around the rails, where red paint had dripped to the deck, showed it had been lately refurbished to lead the funeral procession. It proudly headed the fleet of thirty strong.

In the prow, a small party stood, facing into the wind created by their progress. All of them wore an item of black, stark against their normal clothes; chiefly bright colours like the boat. The men, including the captain, wore scraps of black fabric tied about their wrists. Women wore the same in their hair. One was a young girl, and she stood only a pace behind the plain coffin. The coffin of course must always be foremost, must lead the way out to sea, especially when it held a child.

This particular casket had been used three times by the family. Wood was hard to come by in District 4, and the coffins the Capitol supplied were mostly burnt up for firewood. Many of the other districts employed the practice also. District 8 favoured offcuts of cloth to wrap their dead in, and District 2 had a habit of building stone cairns. They used what they had plenty of. But nobody in District 4 thought it was right to trap someone under the ground, even in death. But there was always a coffin or too in the village, for they were useful to transport the body.

Glints of the pale sunshine caught in the girl's hair, blown back by the wind. It also dried her tears before they dripped off her chin. Her eyes were not on the open water, but down on the simple coffin that held her brother.

When the trawler's motor was cut and it began to drift gently, Sirri lifted her eyes from the casket. Her mother put both hands on her shoulders and gently pulled her back. Carefully, her father lifted the lid of the coffin and the family bowed their heads. Drift's body was wrapped in coarse netting, the same they used to haul in their catch of silvery flounder and mackerel. A piece of the family's net had been cut, just for him. He wore no clothes, as was tradition, but it was impossible to tell. Sirri was glad the netting also covered the wound that ended her brother's life.

Three days earlier, the same sombre group had gathered in the living room of one small house; crowded and noisy with the breathing and movements of so many. The family was granted the day off, a rare leisure, to see Drift start the games. Sirri sat close by her mother, and for the first time she was glad that she had not passed the test and entered the career academy like her brother. She twisted her hands into the rough cotton of her dress and tried not to hold her breath. When the countdown reached zero and the gong rang loudly in the small room the family stiffened. Drift's uncle, the captain of the trawler, leapt to his feet; he was a past career and the training died hard.

Twenty seconds into the games, when the brute from 11 slashed his scythe, the room exploded. The men were on their feet shouting while on screen, Drift dropped in a messy heap; his guts tangling about his feet. Drift's mother screamed as if it were she who was cut. And Sirri remained sitting with her eyes fixed to the screen. She was waiting for her older brother to get up and laugh as he so often did. But this time, he did not. Instead, the camera showed a close up of his face, his eyes wild with pain. Drift's lips were moving, but as much as Sirri strained her ears, she never caught his last words.

Now the sea looked flat and hard, as if it wouldn't open to receive a body. The captain of the trawler conducted a short service for his nephew, fingering the black band on his wrist. The rest of the fleet drew up close to listen to his words, borne on the wind. On each deck, people stood respectfully facing out to sea. They saw no white-caps, only unforgiving, concrete-grey water. Then Drift's father spoke, with a stiff arm around his wife's shoulders.

"My son trained, he did us proud," he said gruffly.

When his wife spoke, it was barely audible. Those on closer boats passed back the words to those on the outer.

"Goodbye Drift, my darling."

Sirri could only echo her mother, but in her mind she saw her brother alive, and she wanted to tell everyone listening how she would miss him teasing her. If her throat had not closed painfully, she would have told of the time he pretended to pull her under the waves and forgave her when, in her panic, she gave him a blood nose.

The brother and father lifted the body gently and lowered it over the side of the boat; the side that faced the open ocean. The water opened to receive its treasure, closing all too quickly. Sirri strained her eyes but soon there was no sign of the passing. And still the gulls wheeled, dipping lower over the boats in hope of a feed.

Long after the trawler turned for the shore, Sirri leaned over the rail, looking back to Drift's resting place. She remembered the way Drift's nose wrinkled when he laughed and pushed her off the jetty. And she wished she hadn't shouted at him that day. Her tears began again, but the brisk wind dried them to nothing but salt on her cheeks.


End file.
